UK judge rules Apple must publicly admit Samsung did not copy iPad design

Bloomberg reports that UK Judge Colin Birss has ordered Apple to post notice on the Apple UK website -- as well as Financial Times, the Daily Mail, Guardian Mobile magazine, and T3 -- stating that Samsung did not copy the iPad's design. This comes on the heels of the ruling from the British High Court stating that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, 7.7 and 8.9 are sufficiently different from Apple's design, and that all of them are strongly based on prior art. Apple must leave notice on their UK website for six months informing consumers of the ruling.

Apple's counsel of course pushed back against the ruling, citing that in essence they would be forced to advertise for their competition, telling the court “No company likes to refer to a rival on its website.” Of course, no company wants to spend millions to defend their products from invalid lawsuits, either. 

We hate legal squabbles around here. But we love this turn of events, only because this sort of punishment just might make those billionaires think twice before filing the next frivolous lawsuit. Hopefully, Judges in the US are paying close attention.

Source: Bloomberg

 

Another huge win for Google as judge throws out the copyright claims by Oracle

U.S. District Judge William Alsup made a key decision on Thursday in the Google v. Oracle case. He dismissed Oracle's claims that the APIs that Google used were copyrightable.

Just last week, a jury found that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents, which was a big win in itself. The copyright claims were one of the key issues though as Oracle was seeking $1 Billion dollars from the software giant for 37 Java APIs. Oracle has predictable promised to be appeal, but it looks like they've all but lost at this point.

This is a big win for Google, but as we've said before, it's a shame that these trials have to happen in the first place. Millions of dollars will continue to be poured into legal fees until the software patent issue is resolved.

Source: The Guardian